


Fantastic Voyage

by LtLJ



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Action/Adventure, Character of Color, Friendship, Gen, Team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-11-08
Updated: 2008-11-08
Packaged: 2017-10-02 20:28:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LtLJ/pseuds/LtLJ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John knew he shouldn't have taken out One for a routine mission. Jumpers Three and Six might crash, blow up, fall into oceans, volcanoes, stars, but Jumper One took you on adventures. If something was going to go disastrously wrong in Jumper One, it was going to be a spectacular, multi-dimensional disaster, with special effects and a soundtrack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fantastic Voyage

John was flying Jumper One over the surface of a small planetoid, taking energy readings, when the life sign detector went crazy.

Sitting in the shotgun seat, Teyla said worriedly, "What is it?"

Possibly she was thinking of the last time that had happened, when they had flown into a flock of giant birds, which had been horrific for both the birds and the jumper. But this planetoid was airless, they were in an uninhabited system with a spacegate, and unless these were space-birds, there shouldn't be anything alive out there. All John could see out the port was empty starfield, with the gray-white curve of the planetoid's rocky surface below. He said, "I don't know. It looks like it's reading something below us." He shook his head, bringing up more screens, trying to coax more information out of the sensors.

Sitting behind John, Ronon shifted forward to get a better look out the port. "Another ship?"

"The sensors do not seem to show one, only the life signs." Teyla frowned, studying her side of the console. "It doesn't make sense."

"No, it doesn't. Maybe this weird energy we keep picking up is confusing our sensors." In the rear cabin, Rodney, Colonel Carter, Zelenka, and Dr. Simpson were sitting with the monitoring equipment, trying to analyze the energy from the planetoid. If it was a ship, it would sure as hell confirm Rodney's theory that there was an advanced civilization hiding out here, causing the strange readings. John raised his voice to call back to them, "Colonel Carter, Rodney, we've got a--"

The port went black, and a second later, the inertial dampers and the power failed, and the console slammed up into John's face.

***

_This is not going to be good._ John knew he had only been out for a moment, but his head was pounding from a sharp contact with the flat of the control yoke. He knew he shouldn't have taken out One for a routine mission. Jumpers Three and Six might crash, blow up, fall into oceans, volcanoes, stars, but Jumper One took you on adventures. If something was going to go disastrously wrong in Jumper One, it was going to be a spectacular, multi-dimensional disaster, with special effects and a soundtrack. _I should have taken Four. Four is boring._

John pushed himself up, staring out the port. There was nothing out there, just darkness, no stars, no planetoid. The lights flickered as power returned, he could see from the displays that life support was active, but the sensors were flashing confused readings.

He looked around for Teyla and Ronon. Teyla was pushing herself back from the console, pressing her sleeve to a bloody nose. Ronon had gotten thrown to the deck and was just climbing to his feet. John asked, "You guys okay?" He could hear groaning, movement, and somebody cursing in Czech from the rear cabin.

"Yeah." Swaying groggily, Ronon put a hand on the arm of John's seat to steady himself. "What the hell happened? Something hit us?"

"I am fine." Teyla's voice sounded nasal, and annoyed. "Was it the strange energy? We were transported...somewhere else?"

"Uh..." John looked back at the port. _No stars,_ he thought. And the life signs detector had tried to warn them about something, something big. _No..._ The darkness was moving. "No. Oh, hell no." He hit the jumper's exterior lights.

The light illuminated a dark-walled tunnel, lined on either side with tall narrow columns, every surface pitted, mottled. Some distance ahead, a dark round thing hung from the ceiling. Teyla said, in shocked realization, "But that looks like--"

"Tonsils," Ronon finished. He looked at John, squinting. "Did this really happen?"

"Yeah." John shoved to his feet. He made it to the cabin hatch just as Colonel Carter stepped through. She had a red mark on her forehead that would probably be a bad bruise shortly, but didn't look hurt otherwise. Behind her, everybody seemed to be stirring and stumbling to their feet. She said, "What happened?"

"A monster ate us," John said. He couldn't think of a way to break it gently.

"A what ate what--" Her eyes went to the port, widened, and she grabbed him by the collar of his jacket. Her expression suggested she was trying to decide whether to laugh hysterically or punch him in the face.

"Yeah, that's what I thought too," John said.

"What the hell are you--" Rodney pushed past them both into the cockpit. He stopped, staring at the tonsils. "Oh God. That's not-- Tell me that's not--"

Carter let go of John, stepping forward, staring incredulously. "Oh yeah, this is a new one."

Zelenka leaned around the cockpit door, muttered, "I feel sick," and sank to the floor. Dr. Simpson, still staring in horror, didn't notice.

"This is just not possible!" Rodney shouted.

Ronon snorted, and sat down heavily in the seat behind Teyla. "Tell that to the monster."

"Shouting will not help," Teyla told Rodney, teeth gritted and still sounding nasal. "How do we get it to release us?"

"Good question." Simpson eased forward, stepping over Zelenka's crumpled body. "Oh Jesus, those are teeth."

"Of course they're teeth," Rodney said thickly. "It's a monster! How can it chew us if it doesn't have teeth?"

Down on the deck, Zelenka moaned.

_The monster_. _Which ate my jumper._ John shook it off, and went back to the pilot's seat. He tried to get a close sensor view of what was behind their stern, though he was pretty certain it was going to be a view of more giant teeth. They seemed to be facing down the creature's gullet.

The holographic screen fizzled with static for a moment, then cleared. _Oh yeah, teeth._ At least when this had happened in _The Empire Strikes Back_, the creature had been obliging enough to sit there with its mouth open until the _Millennium Falcon_ could fly out. He said to Carter, "Shoot our way clear?" The situation was bizarre enough that he wanted a second opinion.

She let her breath out, grimacing at the sensor view. She shook her head helplessly. "That sounds like a terrible idea, but I can't think of a better one."

Yeah, that's what John had been afraid of. He said, "Okay, everybody hold on."

Everyone went for seats. Rodney dropped into the jump seat behind John, while Simpson and Carter each grabbed one of Zelenka's arms, dragging him back into the rear cabin.

The weapons screen had already popped up, anticipating John's request. They could fire a drone, that wasn't the problem; it was targeting. _The front teeth, or the cheek?_ Straight up into the brain might be the best shot, but they had no idea what the outside of this thing looked like. Its cheeks might be armored, its brain might be in its ass. No, the front teeth were the best option; at least the weapon's screen had a clear view of them. "Here goes."

He brought the engines back online, then, watching the sensors for the impact, he fired two drones.

He had a whole second to think that maybe it had worked. Then he was flung back against his seat as the jumper tumbled end over end.

Rodney and Zelenka yelled in chorus. It was like one of the roller coasters that ran backwards, and with the jumper's exterior lights, John watched the ridged gullet shoot past as they fell.

The jumper landed with a hard splat, most of the shock taken by the inertial dampeners. The lights showed a big cavernous chamber, the walls a mottled reddish color. John took a deep breath, and looked at Teyla. She looked at him, eyes wide with dismay. Behind them, Ronon said, "It swallowed us."

***

The first thing John did was pull the tracking data from the weapon's console to see if it had recorded the impact of the drones. It had; one had struck the front teeth, the second the roof of the mouth. Neither impact had had any discernible effect on the creature. Reading over his shoulder, Carter had muttered, "Uh oh."

John bit his lip. "Yeah."

Rodney had said grimly, "The first thing we need to figure out is if its stomach acid can eat through the jumper's shielding."

There was a moment of horror while everybody thought through the implications of that, then they got to work.

Now Carter and Rodney had a panel open, making fine adjustments to the sensors so they could get more information about the creature's insides. Zelenka and Simpson were in the rear cabin with a wall panel open, switching everything non-essential over to life support.

"The jumper's exterior is impervious to vacuum, cold, heat, all but the strongest radiation," Teyla pointed out. Her nose had finally stopped bleeding, but she didn't want to waste water cleaning up. With blood on her jacket sleeves and shirt, she looked like she had been in a knife fight. "Would it not be impermeable to something like this? As long as the creature does not contract and crush us--"

From the rear cabin, Zelenka made a little noise of distress.

"Yes, but we don't know anything about this thing. It could eat rock and metal," Rodney told her, brow furrowed as studied the sensor readouts. "And jumpers might be the equivalent of a light snack." He added glumly, "I wish Simpson was a xenobiologist."

Simpson leaned away from the panel to frown at him. "Why me?"

Rodney waved a hand. "If I was a xenobiologist it would be an obscene waste of my abilities--"

"What about me?" Zelenka demanded.

Rodney snorted. "I barely trust you as an engineer, let alone a--"

John said, "Rodney." Simpson was glaring at Rodney with narrowed eyes and Zelenka was muttering in Czech. The last thing they needed was a scientist cage-fight.

Ignoring the byplay, Carter reached for another tool. She told Teyla, "If we knew our shielding would hold up, it would give us more time to look for a way out. Or we could just wait."

"Wait?" Ronon lifted his brows. "Oh. You mean for it to...?"

Carter nodded. "For nature to take its course."

"For the creature to poop," Zelenka added, apparently feeling this needed more clarification.

Teyla rolled her eyes. "Yes, thank you, I believe everyone understood."

"But we don't know how long that could take," Simpson put in, sitting back from the panel. "And we could get, you know, stuck."

"I can think of a lot more horrible things that could happen before we even got close to that point," Rodney said.

"But we may not have a choice." Carter tapped a command into the sensor board, frowning at the results. "Believe me, I'd rather have a choice, I'm just not seeing one right now."

Rodney waved his tablet. "The choice is that this thing either takes a shit or we die in the most unimaginably painful way possible, or both."

"Rodney!" John rubbed his eyes. He still had a headache from getting knocked into the console. "Let's just wait until we get some more information, all right?"

"Okay, I think I've got it," Carter said, and the HUD popped up a new sensor screen.

Zelenka and Simpson crowded into the cockpit, everybody staring at the holographic display. Some of it John could read, some he couldn't. There were lists of metals, minerals, other elements. Rodney groaned, and Carter muttered, "Rocks, with high metal content. That's not good."

Simpson said hopefully, "But there's nothing that looks like a digestive acid..."

"Oh, God," Rodney said suddenly.

"What?" John, Teyla, Carter and Ronon all said it in chorus, staring at the displays. John hadn't seen any change, even in the parts he couldn't read.

"That!" Rodney pointed. Not at the holographic display, but through it, out the port. The jumper's exterior lights were still on and in their glow something flew by, then another something, and another. They looked like giant gray amoebas, floating through the stomach, each one maybe four to five feet across.

_Oh, crap,_ John thought. Not so much _The Empire Strikes Back_ as that older movie, the one they had made a ride out of at Disneyworld, the one that made people throw up. _Wasn't Raquel Welch in that?_

"I think that is the digestive...element." Zelenka gripped the back of Teyla's chair, sounding as if he was about to stroke out.

"But if they're dissolving the rocks, they're doing it slowly," Simpson said, leaning forward to peer out the port. "I don't see any sign of--"

Carter made another adjustment and the screen changed. "Look at these readings." She didn't sound hopeful. "Those rocks are emitting the energy signals we were tracking. There's a good chance this thing is feeding on that energy. It swallows the rock, holds it in its stomach until the energy is drained, then expels it."

Teyla began, "But perhaps the jumper's energy is too different to--"

"Power drain!" Zelenka pointed frantically at a string of new readings, the letters blinking urgently. "Those things must be clamped onto us!"

Teyla winced in resignation. "Never mind."

_Yeah, nothing about this is going to be easy,_ John thought. "So we don't wait. We find the entrance to the...intestines, or whatever, and make our way out before it can drain more of our power."

"Ugh," Rodney commented. He shrugged helplessly. "But it's not any more crazy than shooting the teeth."

"Shooting the teeth didn't work," Ronon reminded him.

Rodney glared at him. "That wasn't my point."

"We need to get those things off us before we try it." John had another terrible idea. He twisted around to ask Zelenka, "Can you do the thing again where you turn the cloak into a forcefield, and extend it out from the jumper?"

Zelenka nodded nervously, still watching the floating amoebas. "Yes, yes, like I did when we were underwater, to rescue Rodney."

"Hey, I can make a forcefield too," Rodney said, like it was a freaking contest.

Teyla leaned forward. "With the forcefield, we could go outside the jumper and remove the creatures."

"Sounds good to me," Ronon seconded.

John half-expected Carter to object, just because she was his CO and he always expected COs to object. He was still getting used to how fast her mind worked, how she was always right there with you if not a step ahead, how she seldom if ever needed anything explained. She studied the power display, her brow furrowed in concern, and all she said was, "We need to do it now."

***

With four of Atlantis' top scientists, the conversion from cloak to forcefield went blindingly fast. In a short time, they were ready to open the hatch.

Zelenka had told them, "The mix of gases in creature's stomach is not something we can breathe, of course. Exposing your skin to it wouldn't be good, either. But the forcefield will be pressurized by jumper's recycling system, so you will have to keep the hatch open to breathe while you are out there." He had added nervously, "I hope those things don't try to come inside."

Teyla exchanged a look with John, and said, "I think we all hope that."

So while John and Ronon went out to remove amoebas, Teyla and Carter would guard the hatch, with Rodney monitoring the power drain. Watching the atmospheric sensors from the cockpit, Simpson said, "Okay, you're good to go!" and John hit the release for the hatch.

As the hatch lowered, John saw the forcefield as a slight haze about thirty feet past the edge of the ramp. The air was still a little thin, and he heard the jumper's vents hissing as they worked to supply the larger space. John stepped off the ramp, expecting the surface to be unpleasantly squishy. It was rock hard, which was even more unpleasant. "Careful," Carter said from the hatch, worriedly scanning the area. "We don't know how these things are going to react when you shoot them."

"We're walking around in something's stomach," Ronon commented, looking around warily as he moved away from the ramp. "That's as weird as it gets."

"You hope it's as weird as it gets." John backed up, getting a look at the top of the jumper. It was covered by the giant amoebas, three deep. They looked a lot worse in person than they did through the port or on the sensor map, and they were...pulsating. "Try that one on the end."

John heard the distinctive whine as Ronon switched his pistol to kill. He fired at the amoeba hanging off the starboard side. It flopped over, sliding off to land on the ground with a splat. John braced himself for anything, but the other amoebas didn't react. Ronon lifted a brow. "That works."

That was a relief. "Let's get this over with."

They both opened fire, and the amoebas fell off the jumper, landing in heaps beside it. Ronon worked his way down the starboard side and John down the port, keeping a careful eye on the edge of the forcefield.

He was nearly up to the cockpit when Carter's voice said through his radio, "How's it going?"

"We're almost there. The ones on the bottom are harder to kill," John told her. They were taking twice as many rounds as the others and he had already had to put in a new clip.

Rodney broke into the channel to say, "They're probably drawing more energy off the jumper than the others. Our power level is going up--"

From the other side of the jumper, Ronon yelled, startled, and John heard a thump. "Ronon!" He bolted around the nose of the jumper.

He skidded to a halt at the horrifying sight of Ronon sprawled on the ground, a giant amoeba on top of him, only his legs visible. For a stunned instant John thought it was eating him, then he realized the thing had landed on him and flattened him to the ground. He lunged forward, knowing he couldn't shoot the thing without hitting Ronon.

He let the P-90 swing on its strap and grabbed the edge of the amoeba with both hands. It felt like slick snake hide, but he threw his weight back and the thing started to peel backward. Ronon flailed out from under it, still holding his gun. John dropped the thing and as it flopped to the ground Ronon fired point-blank.

"How the hell did that happen?" John demanded.

Ronon was breathing hard, like the thing had half-smothered him. "It came at me from-- Duck!"

John flung himself forward, twisting around as he lifted the P-90 again. All he saw was a wall of amoeba coming at him. He fired just as it hit, and it slammed him back into the jumper, knocking him to the ground. He struggled, fighting to get it off him, fighting for air, then Ronon grabbed his arm, dragging him away from it.

The things seemed to be coming from everywhere, and John kept firing as he and Ronon half-crawled, half-scrambled back toward the ramp.

Then he heard Teyla and Carter yelling, and P-90 fire, and thought, _thank God_. Then something slammed him down and the world went dark.

***

John came to coughing his lungs out, sprawled on the floor of the jumper. Somebody caught his shoulders, steadying him. He finally managed to stop and gasp for air, enough to say, "Ronon?"

"Here." Ronon's voice sounded raw. John squinted and saw he was slumped in a corner, looking bleary and sick. Simpson was sitting beside him, pressing a wet towel to his forehead. Zelenka was nearby, clutching the medical kit.

"It took us some time to get to you," Teyla said, her tone making it an apology. She was the one holding John's shoulders. "Those things, they swarmed you."

John remembered it, sort of. A gray wall, crushing weight, not being able to breathe. "Did it work?"

"Yes. We have moved into the intestines." Teyla sounded a little sick herself. "It was an...interesting moment."

"There was a sphincter," Zelenka explained, sounding horrified. "It was terrible. Terrible!"

"Glad I missed it." John looked toward the cockpit. Rodney was in the pilot's seat, with Carter in the co- pilot's chair, her attention split between the sensor display and the tablet propped on the console. They were moving slowly through a long pulsating red-orange tunnel. Just looking at it made John's stomach try to flip. He wasn't sure if it was the color or the pulsating, or both.

"Are they okay?" Rodney yelled, gripping the control yoke and not taking his eyes off the port.

"They are fine!" Teyla answered him.

"It's okay, Rodney," Carter said, her voice soothing and even. "Just relax."

"Relax, right." Rodney sounded nervous but determined. "Now, all we have to do is not be crushed to death in the alimentary canal--"

"Just fly, Rodney," John croaked, and slumped down to the deck again.

***

It took about six hours to make it out, and Zelenka claimed to be scarred for life, but the mission won the "where no man has gone before" award at the Christmas party.

  
**end**


End file.
